


Say It Right

by rendawnie



Series: Pieces [4]
Category: B.A.P, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Forbidden Love, Gangsters, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Violence, Press and Tabloids, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-28 09:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11415426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendawnie/pseuds/rendawnie
Summary: It's the end of the line, and Yongguk is tired of lying.Soundtrack: "Say It Right", Nelly Furtado





	Say It Right

“So, all you have to do is tell everyone that you don’t know each other, you’ve never met in person until today, and you definitely aren’t in a secret relationship that could ruin not only your lives, but break the peace between your families and cause an all out war, frankly. That’s all you have to do. And then we’ll read the closing comments and go home.”

Namjoon looks away, closing his eyes. He can feel Yongguk’s hand tighten around his, can almost hear him thinking.

He doesn’t want to do this. He never wanted to do any of this.

On top of everything, everything pressing down and threatening to crush him, this woman, his father’s new press secretary, is just being so fucking _glib_ about the whole thing. Namjoon knows it’s because she doesn’t really care. She has no reason to. She doesn’t care that he’s in love, that he and Yongguk have been in love for years without anyone finding out, until now. She doesn’t care who leaked their relationship to the media, doesn’t care about the way it trickled down through their families and their businesses until it made an ocean under their feet.

An ocean of lies they’ve been filling for the last week.

When he makes himself look again, Yongguk is staring straight ahead, at the wall. At nothing. There’s an odd little smile on his face, but it’s not like the ones that make Namjoon’s heart race. This one makes him a little nauseous, actually.

He bites his lip, rolling everything over and over in his mind. If Kim Namjoon has one true skill, it’s _thinking._  Only, thinking doesn’t get you anywhere. That’s where Bang Yongguk comes in.

Yongguk is a doer.

Namjoon thinks about all the new lies they’ll have to tell, in less than half an hour.

_You don’t know each other._

_You’ve never met in person until today._

Namjoon met Yongguk when he was eighteen years old, when they were both at the same university. Looking back, Namjoon’s not even sure how that was allowed to happen, considering how carefully they were kept away from each other until then.

The only sons of the two biggest businessmen in Seoul. The unwilling heirs to the throne.

The only sons of two men with a decades-old vendetta that no one remembers or cares to discuss anymore, except for what it left in it’s wake. The pointless violence. The war no one wants to fight anymore, except they’re all being paid to. The ripples it’s still making in Namjoon and Yongguk’s ocean.

When Yongguk kissed Namjoon for the first time, at some bullshit frat party that rung in the beginning of Yongguk’s senior year and the start of Namjoon’s freshman courses, they were the only sober ones in the room, the only ones who would remember what happened the next day.

The only ones who would never forget.

_You definitely aren’t in a secret relationship that could ruin not only your lives, but break the peace between your families and cause an all out war, frankly._

Oh, but they definitely are. Yongguk had made sure that Namjoon knew he wasn’t giving him up, giving _them_ up. Even as their families had threatened to disown them both, take away their inheritances, strip them of all the luxuries and privileges they’d grown up with, Yongguk was fierce in his opposition. He would fight for them, and Namjoon believed that with every fiber of his being.

Until his father sat him down and told him that if their relationship continued, he would have Namjoon taken care of.

After that, Yongguk was broken.

Most people break cleanly, right down the middle of their hearts and souls and minds.

Yongguk shattered.

A piece here, a piece there. Parts of him seemed fine, completely normal. Only Namjoon knew how much his father had ripped from Yongguk with just a few sentences.

Namjoon isn’t scared to die. He’s only scared of being without Yongguk.

The minutes crawl by as they sit in the small waiting room together. Eventually, the press secretary gives up trying to get any sort of reaction out of them, any sign that they’re actually listening. She leaves with an eyeroll, and Namjoon is glad to see her go. He glances at Yongguk, who’s still gripping his hand just this side of too tight, just enough that Namjoon knows he’ll have faint bruises when Yongguk finally lets go.

Good.

Namjoon sighs. “I love you,” he mutters, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He watches Yongguk again, waiting for an answer. Waiting for anything.

Finally, Yongguk softens a little. He still doesn’t look over at Namjoon, but he whispers, “Me too”, and it’s enough.

_“I love you,” Yongguk pants for the first time when he’s inside Namjoon, their bodies slick with sweat on top of the silk sheets in Yongguk’s bedroom in his father’s penthouse. “I love you so fucking much, Namjoon.”_

Namjoon was eighteen. He’s twenty-two now. He wonders if they can hide it much longer, if this will work. If he’ll live to see twenty-three.

He wonders if Yongguk would make it without him.

“It’ll be okay,” Namjoon says after a while. “No matter what happens, it’ll be okay.” He doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying, and he knows Yongguk doesn’t either, but what else can he do? Namjoon isn’t a doer. He’s a thinker. He doesn’t believe in much, but he has to believe that some part of this will be okay. Otherwise, what’s the fucking point?

“Yeah,” Yongguk replies after a long pause, his low, rumbling voice soft in Namjoon’s ears. Namjoon knows he’s not like this always. He’s seen Yongguk be an enforcer for his father’s more illicit business ventures. He knows what Yongguk is capable of. Too much, sometimes. So much it overwhelms him, makes him shake with nerves in the middle of the night when they’re alone in bed together, and Yongguk wakes up in a cold sweat and Namjoon holds him until he’s all right again.

He glances down at their hands clasped together, Yongguk’s tattoos just peeking out at the ends of his dress shirt and jacket. Yongguk’s hands are delicate, almost small. Beautiful, like him. Beautiful even when he’s holding a gun.

Namjoon was twelve when his father handed him a gun for the first time.

“I don’t want you to have to learn about this,” he’d said. “But there will come a day when you need to protect yourself. The world is a dangerous place, Namjoon. I’ve made it more dangerous for you than I’ll ever forgive myself for. So, learn. For me.”

And Namjoon learned.

He’s never actually taken a life. He’s not sure if he could. Yongguk has ended countless lives in his father’s name, in the name of what his family built before he was old enough to understand that he would be responsible for holding it all together.

_On a yacht somewhere near Ibiza, Yongguk gives Namjoon that big, gummy smile he loves more than almost anything in the world. “I’m home when I’m with you, Namjoon-ah. Anywhere we are, I’m home.”_

The last time Namjoon attended a press conference, it was for a new, brighter side of his father’s business, one Namjoon had directly influenced through many, many conversations and almost begging, pleading with his father to pull away from this darkness they couldn’t seem to shake, no matter how much they wanted to.

A framed picture sits in his father’s office. Namjoon, twenty years old, smiling as he cuts through the ceremonial ribbon and declares the school bearing his family’s name open. He’d had so much hope then, hope and dreams that one day, maybe he’d be free from all of this. Everything keeping what he had with Yongguk in the shadows, far removed from the harsh reality they both had lived in since they were children.

The picture is still there, but the school is closed. Yongguk’s father made sure of that.

There’s no room for dreams, when you’re in a war.

Yongguk gets up, pacing around the room. He doesn’t have far to go, so he just turns in circles over and over until Namjoon is dizzy watching him. After a while, he holds a silent hand up and pulls Yongguk back down onto the worn couch as best he can, but Yongguk goes easily enough. He’s breathing faster, and Namjoon can see something flickering in his eyes, something that could be anger or anxiety or sheer delirium, and he’s not sure he wants to know which it is.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Yongguk says.

“Do what?” Namjoon answers, even though it wasn’t a question, and even though he already knows the response he'll get.

“This. Fuckin’...any of this. This press conference and these lies. I don’t think I can do it.” Yongguk turns halfway to face Namjoon, their knees touching, and Namjoon savors the warmth of it, the safety even in the middle of all the danger.

“We have to,” Namjoon says, and he wishes he could spit the words onto the dirty carpet and stomp them under his designer dress shoes.

“We _don’t_ have to,” Yongguk insists. “We could leave. We could leave tonight. Go anywhere. We could make it far before my father finds out and cuts off the money.”

It’s always been _the_ money, not _his_ money or _my_ money, and Namjoon understands why.

Namjoon swallows hard. “We can’t.”

_We can. Please tell me we can until I believe it._

Yongguk goes on. “We _can,_  Namjoon-ah. We could change our names, start over. Find some small little town where no one’s heard of us. You could teach philosophy and I could work on music again, and…”

Namjoon sniffles. He won’t cry. He hasn’t let himself cry in years, but the thought of Yongguk’s music is almost enough to do it. Music was Yongguk’s first love. Namjoon is his second, and he became the biggest somehow, but he knows how it’s hurt Yongguk not to be able to have that release, not to be able to get the songs in his head out. It’s not that he couldn’t afford to. His father has the money. But once his parents heard what Yongguk had written, the way he’d bared everything, all their secrets and lies and crimes, he was forbidden to pursue music as a career, or even a hobby. Forbidden to tarnish his family’s reputation any further than they had, themselves. Any further than they continued to.

Music was one of the things that first brought them together, and Namjoon wants to cry for all the lyrics their lips have written in kisses and touches, all the words no one else will ever hear.

_They’re crouched in a dark hallway outside the ballroom where Yongguk’s father is throwing a fundraiser when Yongguk looks at Namjoon like he’s made of gold, when he murmurs, “You’re the only thing that makes living worthwhile anymore”, and then he takes a long drink off the flask in his hand and Namjoon doesn’t know what to say, so he licks the words he can’t find into Yongguk’s mouth instead and hopes they stay there, like the tattoos that cover Yongguk’s torso._

“It’s just a few more lies,” Namjoon murmurs softly in the last minutes before the press conference, unable to meet Yongguk’s eyes now. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll still be together.”

Yongguk stands up again, his face set in too many hard lines, too many for his age. “It matters. It all fucking matters, Namjoon. I won’t lie anymore.”

Namjoon stands too, moving as close as he dares to when he knows the press secretary will come back to get them any minute. “Even if it means my life?”

He hates that he’s putting those words on Yongguk, hates that he’s using it as an argument he doesn’t even want to win, because Yongguk is right, and everything else is so, so wrong.

There’s a single knock on the door before Yongguk can answer, and the press secretary pokes her head in and says, “It’s time,” in a voice so apathetic that Namjoon seriously contemplates making this exact second the one and only time he uses the gun strapped to his waist to actively harm someone.

He wouldn’t.

When she’s gone again, Yongguk closes the distance between them in two steps and kisses Namjoon, kisses him good and hard and breathless, and then he moves away just enough to whisper, a fierce, hoarse sound coming from deep in his throat.

“If it’s your life, it’s my life too. They can have two of us, or neither of us. Let’s go.”

As Yongguk leads him out of the waiting room, Namjoon wonders if either of them will come back when it’s all over.


End file.
